Not good!
Unacademy is good support to a CAT aspirant but cannot replace your CAT coaching classes, here’s why:
1. Unacademy lacks physical interaction. The most important thing when preparing for any competitive exam is learning from peers and getting into the atmosphere of learning. This helps you more than you can imagine right now. If I just go to my classes every day and meet like-minded people it pushes me to work hard. This, compared to Unacademy where I just sit alone, watch some videos, and go back to my prep.
2. Non-existent doubt clarification - Doubts while preparing especially for Quant, and DILR are urgent and you cannot go ahead without solving them UA is trying to better here but coaching classes are always going to be ahead in this area as physical interaction is a must for doubt clarification. UA has a doubt-asking feature which asks you to upload a photo of the question, it is helpful but only for Quant. In a class you really cannot go with an LR set, you will feel hesitant doing that.
3. It’s a fish market! UA is like YT Premium, subscribe and watch or don’t! No one cares what you do, no one knows you exist. The First 2 months of your prep will be wasted in trying to find the right educators and adjust in a batch, then mostly like me, you will subscribe to individual courses which are tiring to follow up because they insist you join live classes and you cannot do 2 live classes if timing clashes, so you attend recorded but then you have doubts which the educator cannot solve because it is a recorded class and pressure mounts. Most of the educators at UA join somewhere from their bedroom and overall I don’t think there is any quality moderation. Only some teachers are excellent and to the point.
4. The biggest scam of UA is the ICONIC subscription. I almost paid double and got ICONIC which only gives you access to a dedicated mentor or they think they do. This so-called mentor could be a person who never got into IIM or who scored 95%ile or any random person. That’s fine too until I get a proper resolution from a specific mentor, but THEY KEEP ON CHANGING THE MENTOR! These so-called mentors change every week, and they give you free 10 mins ice breaker sessions where you connect with the new mentor and introduce yourself and understand more about them. I got around 7–10 mentors in 3–4 months and then I never used that tab again and wasted my 10000 rupees on this useless feature.
5. No notes for ICONIC students. So you are paying the same amount as the current ICONIC student but since you joined early you won’t get physical notes. UNETHICAL, AND IMMORAL!
6. Now let’s talk about how is learning. Very bad! The teachers do all sorts of coaching and turn on their webcams and come live to teach on Unacademy and go back to their routine, it is a side hustle for most of them except some.
7. They won’t provide any DPP or practise paper for you to practise you STILL HAVE TO BUY TIME’S MATERIAL OR CL’S MATERIAL. So add that to your fees as well.
8. If after reading this you want to go ahead anyways, watch classes of Ravi sir for Quant, LRDI, and GK. In verbal Shabana madam is good. Karishma madam was good but her sessions now involve too many irrelevant topics. If you are not good in Quant, Udit Saini sir for Quant. GD-PI is not good for UA, so no one.
9. No Mocks! So if you are thinking let’s pay whatever 24K and get started anyways it is cheap than the coaching institutes, you are mistaken. You are not getting notes, mock tests, and GDPI prep which you do get in a classroom program. UA has mock but they are very few and nowhere near the quality provided by TIME or IMS.
10. Personal suggestion -
I would recommend joining a classroom course on weekends if you are working and if you are a grad student, join on weekdays and practise on weekends(the most important part of your prep - Self-study). And if you are well off you can buy Unacademy plus for watching a specific class again or using the ask a doubt feature while practising from home. Do not buy UA. It is a modern way of wasting money. Learning is not supposed to be done sitting at home watching a screen. Go out, make new friends, meet teachers who will help you later in life, sit at a desk, learn from the board, and enjoy going home after classes. Trust me this is the best! Some offline classes that are good are TIME and IMS. It depends on the centre so read the reviews book a trial class, and spend some time finding the best one.